Building Code as Battleground
December 29, 2024 7:31 AM Subscribe
Our right to change the built environment begins in part with the right to change the building code, to understand it not as something written in stone and handed down from above but instead as a living document worthy of debate, antagonism, and revision. It is only a tiny cog in the complex machines that govern how we live together, but it is also one with razor-sharp edges whose impact draws blood. By Ann Lui for Harvard Design Magazine
If you've ever looked into what it takes to get a "non-standard" home put up within the limits of the average US or European town, you've encountered the long arms of a building code. Last time I checked, structures as seemingly uncontroversial as cob houses were disallowed under most Massachusetts municipal building codes. The FPP article mentions one of the anti-sustainability dealios that have historically protected established developers and builders from pesky kids looking to innovate.
posted by rabia.elizabeth at 9:07 AM on December 29 [1 favorite]
posted by rabia.elizabeth at 9:07 AM on December 29 [1 favorite]
This is a really good article and not at all anti-building code. It's frustrating to me how often building code is talked about as some backwards bureaucratic block on innovation, when the history of it is largely written in response to deaths and injuries that were the result of building practices so bad (but so profitable!) that they needed to be made illegal to get people to stop doing them.
Also the IBC and other code are just models, municipalities can and do modify them and then local officials have leeway (for better or worse) to interpret and enforce them.
posted by sepviva at 9:45 AM on December 29 [19 favorites]
Also the IBC and other code are just models, municipalities can and do modify them and then local officials have leeway (for better or worse) to interpret and enforce them.
posted by sepviva at 9:45 AM on December 29 [19 favorites]
And this article didn't get into the deliberately reinforcing privilege things like requiring every residential unit to have a full kitchen (especially as induction tops and single-purpose appliances like air fryers and toaster ovens come to prominence), we're creating very exclusionary and expensive living areas. There's some push in my town to override that for ADUs, but the legislation that allows for ADUs at the state level isn't super popular ("Mah street parking! Poors in mah neighorhood!") so it's unclear how much political capital the overworked Council might put towards fixing that. Meanwhile, people remain unhoused at high rates because we're adding several tens of thousands of dollars to every additional living space.
A few nights ago I was out in my workshop with my wife, and the LG heat pump made some weird noises, so I shut it off and haven't had the whatevers to see if I can figure out what's wrong, but... The only reason my workshop has a freaking heat pump is that when I was building the workshop, I put in various sound isolation features to protect my neighbors from running the router table in the evenings. At some point during construction, the building department said "this is looking too much like a 'habitable structure', you need to be Title 24 compliant", and Title 24 compliance requires climate control, and... now I have a heat pump that I've run probably less than 10 times in the 12 years since I built the shop that's likely kaput.
(the "likely kaput" isn't all LG's fault for building shit with designed-in obsolescence, the initial contractor who installed this fucked it up such that it ran dry of refrigerant, thus reinforcing my "don't let a contractor do anything I don't know how to do and can inspect, but mostly do it myself so they don't fuck it up" philosophy. But California's Title 24 "Building Energy Efficiency Standards" have pretty clearly led to both me spending a few grand on a heat pump that otherwise I'd have just put on an extra sweatshirt for, and a system's worth of refrigerant accidentally vented.)
I don't have a solution, all committee based systems are flawed and prone to warping to reinforce privilege, and as my town's building department has told me, they're not so much concerned about what I do to myself, but about what the next inhabitants of this house and my neighbors experience, but yeah: We need some better code.
posted by straw at 9:58 AM on December 29 [6 favorites]
A few nights ago I was out in my workshop with my wife, and the LG heat pump made some weird noises, so I shut it off and haven't had the whatevers to see if I can figure out what's wrong, but... The only reason my workshop has a freaking heat pump is that when I was building the workshop, I put in various sound isolation features to protect my neighbors from running the router table in the evenings. At some point during construction, the building department said "this is looking too much like a 'habitable structure', you need to be Title 24 compliant", and Title 24 compliance requires climate control, and... now I have a heat pump that I've run probably less than 10 times in the 12 years since I built the shop that's likely kaput.
(the "likely kaput" isn't all LG's fault for building shit with designed-in obsolescence, the initial contractor who installed this fucked it up such that it ran dry of refrigerant, thus reinforcing my "don't let a contractor do anything I don't know how to do and can inspect, but mostly do it myself so they don't fuck it up" philosophy. But California's Title 24 "Building Energy Efficiency Standards" have pretty clearly led to both me spending a few grand on a heat pump that otherwise I'd have just put on an extra sweatshirt for, and a system's worth of refrigerant accidentally vented.)
I don't have a solution, all committee based systems are flawed and prone to warping to reinforce privilege, and as my town's building department has told me, they're not so much concerned about what I do to myself, but about what the next inhabitants of this house and my neighbors experience, but yeah: We need some better code.
posted by straw at 9:58 AM on December 29 [6 favorites]
Yeah, I'm of two minds on some elements of building code. There's value in increased insulation and stricter safety standards, but you have to balance that against the fact that those elements add tons of cost to housing.
It's easy to respond to things that happen like structural failures during extreme weather events with code, but there's not a commensurate response to homelessness because that's not viewed as a related topic. It feels similar to auto safety standards producing heavier more fortified vehicles that are safer for people who own them and more dangerous for everyone else.
posted by Ferreous at 10:26 AM on December 29 [8 favorites]
It's easy to respond to things that happen like structural failures during extreme weather events with code, but there's not a commensurate response to homelessness because that's not viewed as a related topic. It feels similar to auto safety standards producing heavier more fortified vehicles that are safer for people who own them and more dangerous for everyone else.
posted by Ferreous at 10:26 AM on December 29 [8 favorites]
Generally a good, accessible article about how the IBC came to be and is governed and the problems with that. I have some notes, but my knowledge is mostly based on when I worked extensively with the code in the first decade and a half of this century and may be out of date.
1. Part of the inaccessibility of the code (as far as its ability to be read and understood) is how legalistic it is. Everything in the code is written as a pretty straightforward rule, like "All A buildings shall have B", but then there's a long list of exceptions to that rule where if buildings that also have C or D can be different that refer to other parts of the code for C or D, and maybe D has some other requirements that refer to section E and so on. There's also the actual cost-driven inaccessibility mentioned in the article where the ICC tries to keep a strong grip on not restricting access to code so they can charge for it, because their work takes time and money to do (and thus leads to conflicts of interest like the NAHB having a say in what energy efficiency requirements are). Having an online code helps with the problem of having one code book for a 50-person architectural office, but it's a bit of a pain in the butt compared to a paper version when you're having to cross-reference all the different sections and exceptions.
2. Even though a new model code is released every 3 years, jurisdictions (whatever government entity reviews drawings and inspects buildings, referred to in the code as Authority Having Jurisdiction or AHJ - it varies widely across the US between building types and state and local governments) are not required to adopt it immediately, or there's at least a significant lag while they do their own review of the new code's implications. I do most of my work in Michigan, and I think they're just starting to adopt the 2021 code, enforcing it in April of 2025. Last I knew, Indiana was still using 2015. When I worked in California, the state released its own entire code, based on the uniform code, basically 3 years after the official ICC issuance. As you might expect, energy efficiency and accessibility requirements were way more stringent than they were in the Midwest. Other states tend to issue their own set of amendments after their review of the code about things they disagree with for whatever reason, good or bad. To my knowledge, an "amendment" is different from a code issuance and the article muddles that a bit - the code is re-issued every 3 years and that's just the code, straight up. Amendments at the ICC level happen between code issuances as things come up, and maybe those amendments make it into the next code issuance in some way. I don't know if things have changed to where a local AHJ can't just issue their own amendments or code to take care of the inequities mentioned in the article anymore, but even doing that would require some political will and insulation from the desires of developers to build cheaper buildings.
3. Relevant to WorkshopGuyPNW's comment: One of the things AHJs wrestle with is the cost implications of code requirements. There is some leeway in the code for AHJs to override things (especially for designated historic buildings, at least in California), but making alterations to an existing building can trigger construction requirements that go way beyond the scope of what someone wants to do and make any improvement impractical or functionally impossible. Examples I see often working on schools in the Midwest:
- School needs a new roof. Totally reasonable and predictable need, BUT a lot of the existing school buildings have portions dating to the 1950s or so when snow loads and insulation requirements were very different, snow drift buildup around raised portions of a building (like a gym) was unaccounted for, and there was no requirement for having an overflow roof drain as a backup if the main drain got clogged. In some cases, they can just put a new roof membrane on top of the old one and that takes care of it, but if there are already two membranes on the roof, they need to start from scratch and bring the roof up to current code for snow loads and drainage. So things can escalate very quickly from "we have a leaky roof" to "we need to rebuild the entire roof structure", which can understandably not be in the budget.
- School wants a general remodel with new ceilings and floors and wall finishes and they want updated heating and AC installed because there wasn't any when the school was built in 1956. The threshold for triggering updating a building to current accessibility requirements is typically that you're "touching" or "altering" 50% of the building, so if you're doing large-scale remodeling a lot of new requirements may kick in where the bathrooms also have to be redone and any floor level changes need ramps that meet current code. In practice that means that a lot of buildings don't get upgraded because making those changes isn't something the owner can pay for.
- One of the hang-ups with Michigan adopting the new code is a requirement for storm shelters in schools, because Michigan is a place where tornadoes happen. Similar to the accessibility threshold, there's a lot of discussion about when that requirement is triggered if you're altering an existing building. For new buildings, sure, storm shelter makes sense, and the only issue cost-wise is that a district may have passed a bond a few years ago to pay for improvements or new construction, but including a tornado-proof shelter for the entire population of the school wasn't accounted for in the bond amount because it wasn't a code requirement at the time (school districts not wanting storm shelters to protect their students as a matter of course is a separate issue). It gets a little dicey with remodels and additions - if you want to add two classrooms to increase school capacity, do you then have to build a storm shelter for the entire school, the budget for which alone would exceed the cost of the addition? Do you only require that a storm shelter be built for the occupant load of the addition and then parents just have to hope their kids are in one of the "good" classrooms if a tornado hits?
posted by LionIndex at 10:34 AM on December 29 [9 favorites]
1. Part of the inaccessibility of the code (as far as its ability to be read and understood) is how legalistic it is. Everything in the code is written as a pretty straightforward rule, like "All A buildings shall have B", but then there's a long list of exceptions to that rule where if buildings that also have C or D can be different that refer to other parts of the code for C or D, and maybe D has some other requirements that refer to section E and so on. There's also the actual cost-driven inaccessibility mentioned in the article where the ICC tries to keep a strong grip on not restricting access to code so they can charge for it, because their work takes time and money to do (and thus leads to conflicts of interest like the NAHB having a say in what energy efficiency requirements are). Having an online code helps with the problem of having one code book for a 50-person architectural office, but it's a bit of a pain in the butt compared to a paper version when you're having to cross-reference all the different sections and exceptions.
2. Even though a new model code is released every 3 years, jurisdictions (whatever government entity reviews drawings and inspects buildings, referred to in the code as Authority Having Jurisdiction or AHJ - it varies widely across the US between building types and state and local governments) are not required to adopt it immediately, or there's at least a significant lag while they do their own review of the new code's implications. I do most of my work in Michigan, and I think they're just starting to adopt the 2021 code, enforcing it in April of 2025. Last I knew, Indiana was still using 2015. When I worked in California, the state released its own entire code, based on the uniform code, basically 3 years after the official ICC issuance. As you might expect, energy efficiency and accessibility requirements were way more stringent than they were in the Midwest. Other states tend to issue their own set of amendments after their review of the code about things they disagree with for whatever reason, good or bad. To my knowledge, an "amendment" is different from a code issuance and the article muddles that a bit - the code is re-issued every 3 years and that's just the code, straight up. Amendments at the ICC level happen between code issuances as things come up, and maybe those amendments make it into the next code issuance in some way. I don't know if things have changed to where a local AHJ can't just issue their own amendments or code to take care of the inequities mentioned in the article anymore, but even doing that would require some political will and insulation from the desires of developers to build cheaper buildings.
3. Relevant to WorkshopGuyPNW's comment: One of the things AHJs wrestle with is the cost implications of code requirements. There is some leeway in the code for AHJs to override things (especially for designated historic buildings, at least in California), but making alterations to an existing building can trigger construction requirements that go way beyond the scope of what someone wants to do and make any improvement impractical or functionally impossible. Examples I see often working on schools in the Midwest:
- School needs a new roof. Totally reasonable and predictable need, BUT a lot of the existing school buildings have portions dating to the 1950s or so when snow loads and insulation requirements were very different, snow drift buildup around raised portions of a building (like a gym) was unaccounted for, and there was no requirement for having an overflow roof drain as a backup if the main drain got clogged. In some cases, they can just put a new roof membrane on top of the old one and that takes care of it, but if there are already two membranes on the roof, they need to start from scratch and bring the roof up to current code for snow loads and drainage. So things can escalate very quickly from "we have a leaky roof" to "we need to rebuild the entire roof structure", which can understandably not be in the budget.
- School wants a general remodel with new ceilings and floors and wall finishes and they want updated heating and AC installed because there wasn't any when the school was built in 1956. The threshold for triggering updating a building to current accessibility requirements is typically that you're "touching" or "altering" 50% of the building, so if you're doing large-scale remodeling a lot of new requirements may kick in where the bathrooms also have to be redone and any floor level changes need ramps that meet current code. In practice that means that a lot of buildings don't get upgraded because making those changes isn't something the owner can pay for.
- One of the hang-ups with Michigan adopting the new code is a requirement for storm shelters in schools, because Michigan is a place where tornadoes happen. Similar to the accessibility threshold, there's a lot of discussion about when that requirement is triggered if you're altering an existing building. For new buildings, sure, storm shelter makes sense, and the only issue cost-wise is that a district may have passed a bond a few years ago to pay for improvements or new construction, but including a tornado-proof shelter for the entire population of the school wasn't accounted for in the bond amount because it wasn't a code requirement at the time (school districts not wanting storm shelters to protect their students as a matter of course is a separate issue). It gets a little dicey with remodels and additions - if you want to add two classrooms to increase school capacity, do you then have to build a storm shelter for the entire school, the budget for which alone would exceed the cost of the addition? Do you only require that a storm shelter be built for the occupant load of the addition and then parents just have to hope their kids are in one of the "good" classrooms if a tornado hits?
posted by LionIndex at 10:34 AM on December 29 [9 favorites]
where the ICC tries to keep a strong grip on not restricting access to code so they can charge for it
A code amendment sheet would have a strikeout through the "not" text in this sentence and be issued on colored paper to replace the existing sheet in your binder.
posted by LionIndex at 10:42 AM on December 29 [4 favorites]
A code amendment sheet would have a strikeout through the "not" text in this sentence and be issued on colored paper to replace the existing sheet in your binder.
posted by LionIndex at 10:42 AM on December 29 [4 favorites]
Aotearoa NZ, has just released an updated version of Building Standards for earth building.
These standards (first published in 1998) were slightly updated after feedback from the few significant earthquakes in 2011-2016, where earth build homes build to the original standards often survived better than many of the more 'conventional' build methods. Now also including more in the way of structural low-density adobe and such. And of course the spaces often make more use of passive heating, natural humidity balance, great thermal and noise insulation, etc.
And at the moment, those standards incredibly are available for free!
NZS 4299:2024 - Earth buildings not requiring specific engineering design
NZS 4298:2024 - Materials and construction for earth buildings
NZS 4297:2024 - Engineering design of earth buildings
I'm really grateful to be living in a country that has so many people passionate about this stuff.
posted by many-things at 11:12 AM on December 29 [5 favorites]
These standards (first published in 1998) were slightly updated after feedback from the few significant earthquakes in 2011-2016, where earth build homes build to the original standards often survived better than many of the more 'conventional' build methods. Now also including more in the way of structural low-density adobe and such. And of course the spaces often make more use of passive heating, natural humidity balance, great thermal and noise insulation, etc.
And at the moment, those standards incredibly are available for free!
NZS 4299:2024 - Earth buildings not requiring specific engineering design
NZS 4298:2024 - Materials and construction for earth buildings
NZS 4297:2024 - Engineering design of earth buildings
I'm really grateful to be living in a country that has so many people passionate about this stuff.
posted by many-things at 11:12 AM on December 29 [5 favorites]
I deal with the building code constantly as part of my job and while I frequently complain and rail against interpretations, I am more frequently horrified at what commercial development attempts to get away with; esp here in California the process for homeowners is frustrating, but if you make a loophole development immediately exploits it. In particular, the requirements for dwelling units are necessary to prevent misclassification and exploitation by residential developers - there are a lot of reasons that housing starts are slow in CA (lack of greenfield land, cost of developed property, NIMBYism, and a mismatch between demand for low cost solutions and a maximum profit of building expensive single family solutions at a much lower density being some of the non-code related ones). I don’t think a shower or oven is making developers not do a project. I do think the ADU code provisions are a great start to enabling small development, and I’d love to have additional options for self-build and single family pre-permitted solutions, but not at the expense of letting capital reinvent the tenement.
posted by q*ben at 11:14 AM on December 29 [2 favorites]
posted by q*ben at 11:14 AM on December 29 [2 favorites]
Very cool, many-things! For those in the US interested in earth architecture I highly recommend contacting Adobe in Action who know how to apply these NZ standards and get them through local jurisdictions.
posted by q*ben at 11:19 AM on December 29 [4 favorites]
posted by q*ben at 11:19 AM on December 29 [4 favorites]
There's value in increased insulation and stricter safety standards, but you have to balance that against the fact that those elements add tons of cost to housing.
But insulation is such a good example of why we need building codes and in fact where they should be stronger in most jurisdictions. Builders build housing with the least insulation they can get away with, because they won't be paying for the long-term energy cost to heat and cool the dwelling and most buyers don't think long term (especially since they probably won't be occupying the dwelling for that long). Landlords don't care about insulation if tenants pay energy costs. A strong standard for insulation makes a dwelling cheaper in the long run. If we want affordable housing, then making that housing energy-efficient is absolutely necessary.
And insulation is generally pretty cheap anyways (but much more expensive to add after construction).
posted by ssg at 11:25 AM on December 29 [15 favorites]
But insulation is such a good example of why we need building codes and in fact where they should be stronger in most jurisdictions. Builders build housing with the least insulation they can get away with, because they won't be paying for the long-term energy cost to heat and cool the dwelling and most buyers don't think long term (especially since they probably won't be occupying the dwelling for that long). Landlords don't care about insulation if tenants pay energy costs. A strong standard for insulation makes a dwelling cheaper in the long run. If we want affordable housing, then making that housing energy-efficient is absolutely necessary.
And insulation is generally pretty cheap anyways (but much more expensive to add after construction).
posted by ssg at 11:25 AM on December 29 [15 favorites]
A strong standard for insulation makes a dwelling cheaper in the long run. If we want affordable housing, then making that housing energy-efficient is absolutely necessary.
Not to mention the intergenerational injustice of wasting energy now.
posted by clew at 11:42 AM on December 29 [5 favorites]
Not to mention the intergenerational injustice of wasting energy now.
posted by clew at 11:42 AM on December 29 [5 favorites]
Another note: The code is meant to make buildings have a minimum standard from place to place, but what the code says and how it's administered by the local authority are very different things. Administration can vary widely - in California, your plan review in general is going to be long, and you'll have to provide a lot of material, but it'll be fairly complete and inspectors in the field are there mostly to make sure that what gets built matches the drawings. In other states I've worked in, the plan review is fairly cursory and inspectors are the ones doing the real code review, which means they can hold up construction due to some fatal flaw in the drawings that the reviewer didn't catch and the necessary changes can be radical. I'm amazed that kind of thing hasn't gotten some government sued into oblivion yet.
posted by LionIndex at 11:50 AM on December 29 [3 favorites]
posted by LionIndex at 11:50 AM on December 29 [3 favorites]
In a crossover with a neighbouring thread Poland's building code requires each separate dwelling unit to have at least 25 square metres (270 sqf) of livable surface, finally written in firmly in 2018 as a response to developers building apartment blocks with micro-studios as small as 11 sqm / 120 sqf. The only result is that the smaller units get built as "service units" - and wouldn't you know it, long term renting is a service. You give an inch, they'll go a mile. I swear regular people are an accidental casualty in drawing even a moderate rein on predatory capitalism.
(Though in the case of people in my block who tried to convert a 55 sqm two bedroom flat into four microstudios, in the process flooding my neighbours three times, the building code was a nice cudgel in getting them to a, stop, and b, fix things on their dime.)
posted by I claim sanctuary at 12:32 PM on December 29 [3 favorites]
(Though in the case of people in my block who tried to convert a 55 sqm two bedroom flat into four microstudios, in the process flooding my neighbours three times, the building code was a nice cudgel in getting them to a, stop, and b, fix things on their dime.)
posted by I claim sanctuary at 12:32 PM on December 29 [3 favorites]
LionIndex, I love your comment and have no solutions to what I'm about to bring up, but I'm just struck by every piece of code you mention has a (probably) good reason behind it, and the issue with bringing the buildings up to code - for most your examples, schools - is funding.
If you fix the roof you have to rebuild it to meet current standards regarding load, because if you don't, there's a worse risk of collapse. But you don't have the money.
If you remodel a certain percentage of the building, you have to add a storm shelter, because if you don't, students are at worse risk of being killed in a tornado. But you don't have the money.
You have to meet current accessibility standards, because if you don't, some students will be disadvantaged; there will not be enough bathrooms, some students will not be able to make it to their classrooms in a reasonable time, and so on. But you don't have the money.
The solution to these problems is somehow, magically, having the money. But our system isn't set up this way. So instead people ask for old buildings to be grandfathered in, so they can be less safe, less accessible. Or the buildings are just not updated at all, so they're still less safe and less accessible while also students also get to enjoy moldy ceiling panels and boiling classrooms, or whatever.
I know schools are just one type of building affected by the code but it just makes the issues so salient when we're talking about children who are required to be inside them.
posted by Kutsuwamushi at 1:55 PM on December 29 [6 favorites]
If you fix the roof you have to rebuild it to meet current standards regarding load, because if you don't, there's a worse risk of collapse. But you don't have the money.
If you remodel a certain percentage of the building, you have to add a storm shelter, because if you don't, students are at worse risk of being killed in a tornado. But you don't have the money.
You have to meet current accessibility standards, because if you don't, some students will be disadvantaged; there will not be enough bathrooms, some students will not be able to make it to their classrooms in a reasonable time, and so on. But you don't have the money.
The solution to these problems is somehow, magically, having the money. But our system isn't set up this way. So instead people ask for old buildings to be grandfathered in, so they can be less safe, less accessible. Or the buildings are just not updated at all, so they're still less safe and less accessible while also students also get to enjoy moldy ceiling panels and boiling classrooms, or whatever.
I know schools are just one type of building affected by the code but it just makes the issues so salient when we're talking about children who are required to be inside them.
posted by Kutsuwamushi at 1:55 PM on December 29 [6 favorites]
There's value in increased insulation and stricter safety standards, but you have to balance that against the fact that those elements add tons of cost to housing.
Insulation is so cheap though... my builder quoted me just AUD 600 (USD 380) to install R1.5 insulation on every single internal wall in a 5 bedroom house - normally the internal wall cavities are just left empty. I had R6.0 insulation put in the ceiling, this is what it looks like, imagine the whole building wearing a huge down jacket. I think I paid about AUD 2500 for 230sqm of R6.0 insulation, excluding labor. And don't forget the foiled vapor membrane which you can also see in the picture, which allows humidity control and blocks radiant heat while channeling condensation (cold winter exterior air versus warm interior house) into the gutter. My craziest experience was having it be 45°C outside according to the local weather station (20th Dec 2019), and coming home at 4pm and having a nap in 24°C comfort without any form of active cooling required. And all that insulation isn't even for summer, it's mainly useful in winter when it drops below freezing...
Knowing all this was the reason why I'm not keen on buying a house someone else built, because it's almost guaranteed they wouldn't have shelled out the extra 1% of the building cost to insulate it properly... it's incomprehensible. You're spending so much more than that on heating and cooling over the next 50 years, with energy prices only going up (and extreme temperature becoming the norm). I'd definitely be on board with building regulations mandating the highest practical level of insulation available on new buildings.
posted by xdvesper at 4:00 PM on December 29 [3 favorites]
Insulation is so cheap though... my builder quoted me just AUD 600 (USD 380) to install R1.5 insulation on every single internal wall in a 5 bedroom house - normally the internal wall cavities are just left empty. I had R6.0 insulation put in the ceiling, this is what it looks like, imagine the whole building wearing a huge down jacket. I think I paid about AUD 2500 for 230sqm of R6.0 insulation, excluding labor. And don't forget the foiled vapor membrane which you can also see in the picture, which allows humidity control and blocks radiant heat while channeling condensation (cold winter exterior air versus warm interior house) into the gutter. My craziest experience was having it be 45°C outside according to the local weather station (20th Dec 2019), and coming home at 4pm and having a nap in 24°C comfort without any form of active cooling required. And all that insulation isn't even for summer, it's mainly useful in winter when it drops below freezing...
Knowing all this was the reason why I'm not keen on buying a house someone else built, because it's almost guaranteed they wouldn't have shelled out the extra 1% of the building cost to insulate it properly... it's incomprehensible. You're spending so much more than that on heating and cooling over the next 50 years, with energy prices only going up (and extreme temperature becoming the norm). I'd definitely be on board with building regulations mandating the highest practical level of insulation available on new buildings.
posted by xdvesper at 4:00 PM on December 29 [3 favorites]
[1] If you fix the roof you have to rebuild it to meet current standards regarding load, because if you don't, there's a worse risk of collapse. But you don't have the money.
[2] If you remodel a certain percentage of the building, you have to add a storm shelter, because if you don't, students are at worse risk of being killed in a tornado. But you don't have the money.
[3] You have to meet current accessibility standards, because if you don't, some students will be disadvantaged; there will not be enough bathrooms, some students will not be able to make it to their classrooms in a reasonable time, and so on. But you don't have the money.
To be clear:
re [1], no, the risk of roof collapse has not increased (unless the fix actually damages or weakens the roof structure). The roof would still meet the standards in force when it was built.
re [2], no, the risk of a student being killed in a tornado has not increased; again - the building would still meet the standards in force when it was built. Of course the remodel itself should be to the latest standards.
In both these scenarios - fix, remodel - the code is saying that over some threshold, this work should also be used as an opportunity to make other updates as well. But it's really hard to make that demand based just on arbitrary thresholds. If an older school is in pretty good overall condition but needs a roof fix that crosses the threshold, and the current standards in force are only a small increment better than the old standard, but updating is prohibitively expensive... is there still a compelling argument to update the whole roof structure at this time? Ditto for the remodel. I'm just saying that there should be some room for deciding case-by-case.
re [3] - we all want our buildings to be as accessible as possible for everyone. There will always be more we could do.
But yes, we all want our buildings as safe and accessible as possible, and yeah, schools deserve bigger budgets for fixes and updates. But funds are not (yet) unlimited.
* * *
My architect friend, who has projects in different municipalities, has told me of the delays he has to fight getting his drawings approved. First, there are still significant differences in the requirements demanded by different jurisdictions, and second - many building departments in our area are understaffed, and it takes a not-insignificant amount of time for a new dept employee to be competent at applying their particular set of rules... net result that it's taking several months or even a year or more to get even basic, conforming projects approved.
There should be greater effort in harmonizing a region's building codes as much as possible, so that reviews and inspections can be done more efficiently, by more people.
posted by Artful Codger at 4:12 PM on December 29 [2 favorites]
Well, if you wanna get really technical, part of the reason for restructuring the roof is that when the insulation is brought up to code, there's typically greater load on the roof than there was before - partly from the insulation, which usually isn't that much of an addition, but also from the snow that used to be melted by heat rising from inside the building that it's now better protected from. I believe it's part of our process because there have been actual failures but I'm not 100% sure on that. It happens, but it's rare that we've had to redo the entire roof structure - we actually analyze what's in place and most often we just have to throw some reinforcing around large steps in the roof elevation to handle drift. But the general point is correct that these are buildings that have been around for 60+ years and haven't had issues beyond normal wear and tear.
posted by LionIndex at 4:45 PM on December 29 [4 favorites]
posted by LionIndex at 4:45 PM on December 29 [4 favorites]
re [1], no, the risk of roof collapse has not increased (unless the fix actually damages or weakens the roof structure). The roof would still meet the standards in force when it was built.
The risk is worse relative to a building that meets current code. My point was just that none of the updates to the code you mention are arbitrary; they exist for reasons of safety and equity.
I'm just saying that there should be some room for deciding case-by-case.
I'm not saying any differently. There was a reason I made sure to say that I liked your comment and wasn't making an argument for any sort of solution.
More flexibility might do more good than harm, but on the other hand it comes with its own problems that would have to be guarded against - such as postponing that tornado shelter indefinitely because it is always, always going to be too expensive. That comes back to what I was saying about how sad it is that we can't provide these things because we don't have the money.
(Says a person who lives in a state where students have been killed by tornadoes while at school.)
posted by Kutsuwamushi at 5:17 PM on December 29 [1 favorite]
The risk is worse relative to a building that meets current code. My point was just that none of the updates to the code you mention are arbitrary; they exist for reasons of safety and equity.
I'm just saying that there should be some room for deciding case-by-case.
I'm not saying any differently. There was a reason I made sure to say that I liked your comment and wasn't making an argument for any sort of solution.
More flexibility might do more good than harm, but on the other hand it comes with its own problems that would have to be guarded against - such as postponing that tornado shelter indefinitely because it is always, always going to be too expensive. That comes back to what I was saying about how sad it is that we can't provide these things because we don't have the money.
(Says a person who lives in a state where students have been killed by tornadoes while at school.)
posted by Kutsuwamushi at 5:17 PM on December 29 [1 favorite]
My frustration is how hard it is to convince people that building code is a bare minimum for general use and certain places, for example labs, need to go far above and beyond that. For example, UBCO's new engineering labs only have one exit from each room, and most of them have aisles with only one exit. Technically allowed by fire code due to how short they are, but VERY bad practice in lab design due to how much more common fires are in labs then normal locations, and the chance that people could be trapped inside the aisle.
posted by Canageek at 5:39 PM on December 29 [5 favorites]
posted by Canageek at 5:39 PM on December 29 [5 favorites]
(I'm trying to get onto the committee at the university that sets the construction standards for labs that we pass onto contractors)
posted by Canageek at 5:40 PM on December 29 [1 favorite]
posted by Canageek at 5:40 PM on December 29 [1 favorite]
Constructing a building "to code" is constructing the worst building the law will allow.
But insulation is such a good example of why we need building codes and in fact where they should be stronger in most jurisdictions. Builders build housing with the least insulation they can get away with,
[...]
And insulation is generally pretty cheap anyways (but much more expensive to add after construction).
One of my trigger issues is how poorly housing is insulated. When I built my shop I went all out and built it with double staggered stud walls and a dropped heal truss that allowed R values around R38 for the walls and R60+ in the ceiling. It so efficient that if I'm out their every day waste heat from lights/fridge/me/tools prevents the heat from coming on until the exterior drops to double digits below zero. As a bonus i can run my tablesaw, air cleaner and dust collector and one can't hear it outside. Keeps the heat out in the summer too (though i end up running a little A/C mostly to handle that waste heat).
And it was cheap! 50 extra studs and some bundles on insulation.
The CMHC put out recommendations for high insulation value wall assemblies in the 70s that with the exception of minor details to account for current materials are still valid today. Did any houses take advantage? Nope. A house built in the last 20 years is probably a 100 times more likely to have 2.5+ bathrooms than what I'd consider adequate insulation.
posted by Mitheral at 6:54 PM on December 29 [6 favorites]
But insulation is such a good example of why we need building codes and in fact where they should be stronger in most jurisdictions. Builders build housing with the least insulation they can get away with,
[...]
And insulation is generally pretty cheap anyways (but much more expensive to add after construction).
One of my trigger issues is how poorly housing is insulated. When I built my shop I went all out and built it with double staggered stud walls and a dropped heal truss that allowed R values around R38 for the walls and R60+ in the ceiling. It so efficient that if I'm out their every day waste heat from lights/fridge/me/tools prevents the heat from coming on until the exterior drops to double digits below zero. As a bonus i can run my tablesaw, air cleaner and dust collector and one can't hear it outside. Keeps the heat out in the summer too (though i end up running a little A/C mostly to handle that waste heat).
And it was cheap! 50 extra studs and some bundles on insulation.
The CMHC put out recommendations for high insulation value wall assemblies in the 70s that with the exception of minor details to account for current materials are still valid today. Did any houses take advantage? Nope. A house built in the last 20 years is probably a 100 times more likely to have 2.5+ bathrooms than what I'd consider adequate insulation.
posted by Mitheral at 6:54 PM on December 29 [6 favorites]
We have a saying:
Regulations are written in blood.posted by rum-soaked space hobo at 1:28 AM on December 30 [1 favorite]
Regulations are written in bloodAnd, yet, years of traffic engineering have increased automobile related fatalities (and, less directly, depressed healthy activities. causing all sorts of other issues). Sometimes the relationships are a little bit tough to demonstration, because other engineering has reduced fatalities, but we can now look back at a lot of the decisions made in the name of safety that, in fact, have made or world less safe and say "that was a mistake".
As we understand more about planning codes, we see even more strongly how those aren't as much about safety as they are about prejudice.
There's a ton of momentum in turning those processes.
I assert that we can point to a lot of building code similarly. Yes, there's a sh*load of building code that's written in blood. But there's also a hell of a lot of it that's written in politics and exclusion and commerce, and we should be careful about praising it all.
posted by straw at 11:01 AM on December 30 [2 favorites]
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posted by WorkshopGuyPNW at 8:54 AM on December 29 [1 favorite]